'International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction'
Abstract
This study focuses on developing a space-centred CAD tool to enable designers to effectively
manage and implement the information of design guidance information and user requirements during design
processes, especially for the stages of design briefing and conceptual design. It aims to structure and store
design guidance and user requirements for healthcare building design into a relational database, and link them
to relevant space entities in design plans. The tool is developed on the platform of Autodesk Architecture
Desktop (ADT). It also enables users to store and retrieve pictures associated with textual information, because
pictures have been always used by designers as an effective medium to represent and deliver design information
and knowledge. This can give users directly visual and more understandable perceptions of the design guidance.
The tool is fully embedded with Autodesk AutoCAD systems to ensure the application of this tool being fully
merged with CAD-based design process. A set of design guidance about Alzheimer clinic built environments are
adopted as a sample to demonstrate and validate the tool. Moreover, the scenario of expanding this application
to more broad areas has also been foreseen
